Zhōuyì zhájì 周易劄記
Notebook on the Zhōu Changes by 逯中立
About the work
A late-Míng Yìjīng notebook in three juàn by Lù Zhōnglì 逯中立 (zì Yǔquán 與權) of Liáochéng 聊城. The work was originally bound together with Lù’s collected memorials, the Liǎng yuán zòu yì 兩垣奏議 — the late-Wànlì-period editorial habit of binding heterogeneous works of a single author into a single volume meant that Lù’s Yì-notebook escaped separate cataloging in the standard MíngQīng bibliographies (Míng shǐ yìwén zhì, Zhū Yízūn’s 朱彝尊 Jīngyì kǎo). The Sìkù editors discovered it inside the Zòu yì compilation and extracted it for separate inclusion. The work opens with an Yì xué qǐ méng jí lüè 易學啓蒙集畧 — a synopsis of Zhū Xī’s Qǐ méng together with Lù’s own observations — and then runs as a notebook through the upper scripture (one juàn), lower scripture (one juàn), and Xìcí through the remaining Wings (one juàn). The canonical text is not reproduced; only hexagram and chapter names mark the sections; the entries are free-running notes drawing largely from earlier commentators (about half to sixty percent), with Lù’s own readings constituting roughly forty to fifty percent. The doctrinal orientation is yìlǐ and Chéng-Zhū-aligned, though Lù is willing to draw on the Yì wěi 易緯 guà qì 卦氣 numerology (the cycle starting with Zhōngfú 中孚 and each hexagram presiding over six days and seven fractions) for those hexagrams where the apocryphal numerology bears directly on the canonical text.
Tiyao
Sìkù tíyào (translated): Respectfully submitted: the Zhōuyì zhájì in three juàn was composed by Lù Zhōnglì of the Míng. Zhōnglì, zì Yǔquán, hào Quèzhāi, was a man of Liáochéng. He was a jìnshì of the bǐngxū year of Wànlì (1586). From Messenger he was promoted to Supervising Secretary; because of memorial-discourse he was demoted to Personnel Records Officer in the Shǎnxī Surveillance Commission. The Míng shǐ yìwén zhì does not catalog this book, nor does Zhū Yízūn’s Jīngyì kǎo list it — apparently because at the time it was edited and bound together with his Liǎng yuán zòu yì into a single volume, so cataloging-bibliographers of classical commentaries had no source from which to give its name.
The book opens with the Yì xué qǐ méng jí lüè, then divides the upper scripture into one juàn, the lower scripture into one juàn, and the Xìcí and after into one juàn. The canonical text is not laid out; only hexagram-names and section-names are marked; the running notes are drawn mostly from various commentators, with the entries on his own opinions amounting to about four or five out of ten. The selection and choice are quite refined and discerning; the general orientation takes meaning-and-principle as principal, not failing of pure uprightness. As to the various hexagrams Zhōngfú 中孚, Fù 復, and Gòu 姤, he likewise applies the Yì wěi doctrine that the cycle of hexagram-breaths begins at Zhōngfú and that each hexagram presides over six days and seven fractions of a day — apparently in the spirit of weighing meanings on the level and not erecting sectarian standpoints.
Respectfully collated, the fifth month of the forty-fourth year of Qiánlóng (1779). Editor-in-chief: Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief proofreader: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Composition can be bracketed by Lù’s jìnshì success in 1586 and his death (date undocumented but probably during the late Wànlì); the catalog meta gives “date: 1589” for the work, but this appears to be a conjectural early-career placement. The bracket here (1586–1610) is conservative.
The work’s principal historical interest is bibliographic-archaeological: the Sìkù editors recovered an otherwise-uncataloged Míng Yì commentary by inspecting the contents of the author’s collected memorials. Methodologically the work is moderate and inclusive — its willingness to selectively employ the Yì wěi guà qì 卦氣 doctrine for specific hexagrams while remaining broadly yìlǐ in orientation is the Sìkù editors’ principal grounds for praise: they read it as the work of a balanced, non-sectarian reader.
The work belongs to the same late-Wànlì Yì-notebook genre as Zhāng Xiànyì’s Dú yì jì wén (KR1a0101) and Pān Shìzǎo’s Dú Yì shù (KR1a0103) — short, free-form, eclectic exegesis aimed at the educated reader rather than the examination market.
Translations and research
No substantial monograph in Western languages located. Lù figures only marginally in studies of late-Wànlì Confucian opposition and remonstrance memorials; his Yì writing has not been the subject of dedicated study.
Other points of interest
The work’s preservation profile — extracted by the Sìkù editors from a heterogeneous late-Wànlì collected works rather than transmitted as an independently catalogued classical commentary — is one of the cleaner cases of Sìkù editorial recovery from non-classical bindings, and a useful reminder that the late-Míng bibliographic record of jīngxué writings is incomplete in ways the Míng shǐ yìwén zhì alone does not reveal.